Our appointment immediately after school today was with Dr Fred, the orthodontist. Joshua is having a brace made for his upper and bottom teeth. It will be a night brace in that he needs to wear it only at night plus for an additional one-hour each day (which we will do either after school or in the evening). The purpose of the brace is to re-distribute Joshua's teeth but mainly to realign his jaw which has some discrepancies. All this is aimed to help him swallow better, speak more clearly and place his tongue correctly in his mouth, guide and align his growing 'big' teeth and help correct his mouth-only breathing habit (phew, sounds like a lot doesn't it?!?!)
They say that an ideal age for children to have this orthodontal work is between 6 and 9 years old and by starting this young the treatment needs to be for only 6-12 months approximately, although obviously it depends on each child. Today we had a quick appointment to simply take upper and bottom impressions. Josh had all sorts of contraptions in his mouth to have various photos taken (obviously so we can have 'before' and 'after' photos). He did not enjoy having a mouth full of some form of setting solution and he was not impressed with the mint-flavoured water! Oh dear ... it may take some convincing to get him back there in 3 weeks time!
We started off quite happy in the dental chair .. but then after much stretching and pushing and pulling, Josh was VERY relieved to get out of the chair!
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